Lawmaker seeks apology for Obama-Hitler comparison

SACRAMENTO (AP) — A Jewish lawmaker said Wednesday that he wants an apology from a Republican candidate for California governor who compared President Barack Obama’s gun control policies to those of dictators such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.

“Assemblyman Tim Donnelly owes an apology to the millions impacted by the Holocaust and to countless American heroes and their families who battled evil during World War II,” Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, wrote in a statement. “His odious trivialization of Adolph Hitler’s brutalities mocks their sacrifice.”

Block is chairman of the Legislative Jewish Caucus but was speaking only for himself.

Donnelly, a state assemblyman from the San Bernardino Mountains community of Twin Peaks, posted a Twitter message a day earlier in which he compared what he said were figures who have supported gun rights with those who have supported gun control.

Those he said “stood for gun rights” were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

He said Hitler, Stalin, Kim, King George III, Mao Zedong and Obama “stood for gun control.”

Donnelly’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Block’s call for an apology.